More Top Dyslexia Questions Answered!

We love getting viewer and listener feedback, and today is one of our episodes where we respond to viewer questions and comments.

Hey everyone, we're Nick and Sonja, and this is Dyslexia Journey. And as I said in that intro, we are about to dive into a viewer question and also a comment. Before that, I would just want to encourage you to also respond, you know, whether that's comments in the comment section or whether that's by actually emailing us. So our email is parentingdyslexiajourney at gmail.com, and we'll put that in the description box as well, but don't hesitate to reach out.

We like to respond as best we can to your questions and, you know, ideas for other episodes, any of that. We would love to hear from you. Yeah, so getting into it, today we're going to start with an email that we received from a listener.

And this person wrote, I'm fairly certain my daughter is dyslexic, but it's been very difficult to get a diagnosis. There aren't a lot of places to help with diagnoses, and because she's so young, nine, everyone has said to hold off. But she fits all of the criteria and is already repeating third grade. It's hard because her self-esteem has taken a hit already, and I'm just trying to get her as much support as possible.

I'm just looking to find a way to help her teachers and myself understand the way her brain works so we can help her learn as much as possible. Any tips on trying to help push the diagnosis along would be really appreciated. Yes, and we'll take it step by step so we can respond to different parts of this. And we did redact some of the information just for privacy reasons. Yes. But there's a lot in there, actually, to respond to.

So let's go ahead and we'll start over, and this time, rather than reading the whole thing, we'll stop periodically to comment. Yeah, so I'm fairly certain my daughter is dyslexic, but it's been very difficult to get a diagnosis. So first thing is, we always say trust your instinct, trust your gut. Yeah. So for all the parents out there, if you think that your child is dyslexic or has a learning difference, you're probably right.

You need to follow your instinct, you should definitely push that. Don't listen to people when they tell you that it's nothing to worry about. Right. So definitely want to encourage that. And sometimes, occasionally, one even has to get a second diagnosis. That was in our case. We'd had, I don't think it was ever quite a full assessment the regular way, but we'd had some various kinds of assessments along the way. And it wasn't until our daughter really had the full assessment at the Gifted Development Center, which does like all kinds of panels.

And you're comparing, you know, sort of regular testing with testing with more time and things like that. That really, really full panel. It took a few days, a couple of days, actually, to do it fully. Not eight hours a day, but it was quite a few hours a day, maybe five or something. You know, it took that to actually get it in that case. And it may have been partly because she has the less common kind of dyslexia, which people often call surface dyslexia.

But in any case, for whatever reason, if sort of an initial assessment also doesn't seem to go far enough, I would encourage you to try somewhere else just to get a second opinion or try a different, you know, more extensive test, something like that. Yeah, like you as the parent, you know better than the experts about your own child. All right. So the next sentence here says, there aren't a lot of places to help with diagnosis.

And because she's so young, nine, everyone has said to hold off. No, no. Yeah, don't hold off. Don't hold off. Well, and I would just say one more sentence here, too. But she fits all the criteria and is already repeating third grade. Yes, do not hold off, like not to give, you know, we always try to also give hope to people if it has been a very late diagnosis. But it's still better.

It's still much better to get it done earlier because, you know, they just have that time, you know, when they're younger and first getting set in their patterns, even with reading and how they're approaching it to use the correct techniques that are going to really help. Yeah. And this is one of the biggest, and actually we fell back into this ourselves with our daughter, is we kind of kept thinking, oh, you know, she's just a late reader.

She'll just maybe pick it up later. And that's just not how it works. Right. Right. Right. And there can be very well-meaning people who say, oh, you know, just some people just need a little longer to develop and that kind of thing. Right. But I can't say that's never happened in the history of the world, but I've personally never heard of a case where it wasn't actually something else going on. Right.

You know, especially when there's that gut instinct with the parent that the way it's going is not quite right. It's not like just that they're not interested. I think maybe if that ever were true, it'd be like the kid isn't interested because they just want to be outdoors all the time or something. Like, and you can really see that when they do sit down to do it, it seems to make progress, but they're just not spending the time.

Something like that. Right. But in this case where there's any struggle, it's really important to realize that it's not normal. Okay. I don't want to use the word normal, but it's that it's something else going on in terms of the quote unquote normal trajectory for how reading would go if someone didn't have something that was going to make it more challenging. Exactly. Yeah. And just to emphasize, it's never too late, but the earlier that you can get it identified and start getting the dyslexia specific reading instruction, the better.

Right. Yes. All right. And let me, I'll go ahead and read the next one too, and then we'll switch back. So the next sentence is it's hard because her self-esteem has taken a hit already, and I'm just trying to get her as much support as possible. So first of all, we're, of course, very sorry to hear that. It's such a common thing that can happen, but it's, it's so challenging for everybody going through that.

And yet another reason to, you know, hopefully get the, get the diagnosis as soon as possible. Again, plenty of people heal from, you know, sort of the trauma of, of, of going through this kind of thing later as well. So, you know, not to say you can't later, but of course, if we can prevent, prevent a lot of it too, or, you know, stop it sooner, that's good too. Yeah. And this is definitely something that, that our daughter went through, around a little bit younger than that actually.

And then, pretty much every parent we've talked to have a dyslexic kid and pretty much every dyslexic adult has described, periods of time where their self-esteem has really taken a hit. So like one or two exceptions and at least one of them, the person, what it is too, that they were identified very, very young. That's true. So, yeah, but, yeah, but, but again, with the self-esteem taking a hit, I guess, have heart.

Of course, we want to try to prevent as much as possible going forward and try to, you know, make things help it, help it along immediately. But just, you know, just to know that those people did make, you know, like they made it to having better mental health later and stuff. So it's still possible to heal later, as well. Yeah, and a few, quick pieces of advice to help, your child with their self-esteem issues.

one is to play to their strengths. people, like to call this sometimes a, strengths first approach. there's other ways that people talk about it, but basically, reading and writing and the things that dyslexia makes challenging, is not all there is to life. And so hopefully your child has interests, things they like doing, things that they are good at. Maybe it's a sport, maybe it's art, maybe it's music. so really giving them the opportunity to, do those activities, and just enjoy them without the pressure.

And, and then also, reminding them and sort of emphasizing that they are good at those things. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And it doesn't have to be, you know, in contrast to academics at all. Like, you could also find the things that feel more academic that, like, even if it's just to say, oh, you're so interested in this topic. You know, it's wonderful to see you, you love learning about this or something, if there's a particular topic they like, you know, and then remembering yourself too, that, you know, it is not really about how smart they are.

It's this other challenge that's making it difficult for them to interact and, and, you know, have the input and output for the schooling process as it is. so it helps, and I think, honestly, having that knowledge yourself goes a long way to not conveying, you know, somehow that, that you think that, that they're not smart in some way too. Right. And, and to, emphasize that point even further, even without a formal dyslexia accommodation, you can, introduce the concept of neurodiversity, which means that everybody's brain is different.

And, brains, every person, every brain has strengths and weaknesses and, your child's brain might not be as, adept as other people's at learning to read and write, but your child, has other strengths. Right. Exactly. And, you know, if it helps, if it helps to point to people who are more famous and, and have, you know, said that they're dyslexic, sometimes that can be useful just, just to sort of, for them to sort of see like, oh yeah, like it normalizes in a way, right.

If they, if they somehow don't happen to know someone else who's dyslexic, although they very well may, because, you know, I think, you know, it's about 20% of one in five who are on some, have it to some degree, or have that variation of the brain. And I like saying have it because, you know, it's still, it gets back into sounding like it's, it's like a disease or something. but it's just language wise, a little tricky to talk about.

So, have it in the sense of having, have their kind of brain. and, but sometimes like, so yeah, so if they somehow don't know someone for whatever reason, because sometimes people still are quiet about it or because, sometimes as kids get older, actually, they know more like which other kids have accommodations. but especially when they're younger, they might not know that as much. and just because, you know, the diagnosis is unfortunately still lagging behind what it should be.

Right. and our last tip is, hopefully even without formal accommodations, especially in, the lower grades, elementary school, hopefully, as a parent, you can work with the school and work with the teachers and get maybe some informal accommodations. Make the teachers aware of what's going on, hopefully they will be accommodating even if it's not official, legally required accommodations. Right. And I mean, and then I guess our other advice, which, you know, we sort of felt unique and being very, we felt pretty extreme and, you know, like changing schools and pulling our kid out, you know, things like that.

but we're finding, but we're finding, it's actually like not that uncommon that that happens. If you really feel like the environment that your kid is in for some reason, you know, especially after attempting to talk to them and make changes, isn't working to really try to really try to consider something else. So whether that's a different school, even within the same system that people think, you know, it just seems more sympathetic, some, you know, private school, if it's possible to pay for it, or if it's possible to, get a scholarship.

but just worth considering something like that. And sometime in the future, we're going to talk a little more about homeschooling. that can definitely be an option, but there's definitely, of course, challenges to it just in general and, and specifically with helping out and teaching your dyslexic kid. But, anyway, so those are our thoughts, lots of thoughts on that with the self-esteem specifically. Yeah. So then, to kind of finish this out, the, the last part of this was, I'm just trying to find a way to help her teachers and myself understand the way her brain works so we can help her learn as much as possible.

Any tips on trying to help push the diagnosis along would be really appreciated. so I guess our first, tip there is for everyone who hasn't listened to or watched already, go back, who's, who's in this kind of situation, especially, go back and watch our interview with Laura Hennigan. She's an attorney, a special education attorney, and she really lays out what your legal rights are, which are, to us at least surprisingly, more, helpful than we realized.

Right. And she, and, and then her, in the second part of the interview, we divided that one into two because there was so much there. you know, she also kind of goes through the different stages, you know, including like how to, you know, she's not, it's not like an adversarial approach whatsoever. It's, sort of like tips also on like what to bring to sessions that you may have with the school or with the teachers.

so it's just really, really helpful episode that's probably worth listening to more than once. Definitely. and then just to pull one piece out of that, if you're kind of asking informally, schools, so basically the, schools have an incentive to not get your child identified generally. And so, they're going to tend to try to delay, not always, but, you know, as sort of a general rule, but, the, and, you know, we're not lawyers, don't take this as legal advice.

But, if you request, if you suspect something's wrong and you request a, assessment in writing, I believe that in the U.S. they are legally obligated to address that. Right, right. So in any case, a lot of, a lot of different pieces to what you asked, but we really appreciate the question. I think it's really always helpful when we hear sort of these case studies, you know, out in the wild, as they say, because.

You know, it brings out sort of the nuances and sort of the different things that come together, right? Like sometimes we, we've just for clarity, try to talk about different, different aspects of the journey at a time, but really like we're navigating and they're interacting all at once. anyway, so thank you so much for, for that question. We're going to move on now to a comment that was a tip in this case.

Yeah, so just a quick comment from YouTube. a tip, for screen reading. There are now specialist fonts designed for dyslexia. I used Open Dyslexic, which is free and works great for me, but you could find one on your PC's slash phone's existing font options that works better, and then make it the default for you. Such a simple change that can make a big difference. Yeah, which is great. So we will definitely put that information in the description box as well.

thank you so much for sharing that tip. We had not heard about that yet, but it is true. So it's true that, certain fonts are better or worse, for dyslexic people. So, all right. Thanks everyone. And again, don't hesitate to reach out either in the comments or at our email, which is parenting Dyslexia Journey at gmail.com.